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IGNATIAN SPIRITUAL EXERCISES TRAINING (ISET)

2023-BLOCK THREE – SESSION 24

UNDERSTANDING THE ELECTION

Annemarie: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. Good to be with you. We’re going to hand over to Brenda to lead us in our opening prayer. Thank you, Brenda.

Brenda: Hello everyone. Good to [00:01:00] see you. As we come to prayer once again, we can just be still. Tonight, we’re looking at the election, so I chose a poem, a piece of writing focused on choices. So, let’s just settle into our space. Feel free to switch off your video so that you can be comfortable.

Make sure that we are muted, and we take a moment to be conscious of God who looks at us as we gather in this time to allow ourselves to rest. Some have come rushing. [00:02:00] Others are weary at the end of a day.

God looks at us in love and we ask of God the grace that all we do in this time will be directed to God’s glory. That all we choose in our lives may be to share in God’s work in the world. We ask of God the grace we need this day to live out of the fullness of our belovedness.

We listen to this piece of writing to the [00:03:00] invitation by Oriah as we listen for what it is God may want us to hear.

The Invitation – Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

 

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

 

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

 

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

 

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

 

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

 

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

 

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’

 

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

 

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

 

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

 

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

 

I’ll leave the words on the screen and scroll them after a while. Notice what feeling or image or tone draws you [00:07:00] and be with God with that.[00:08:00] [00:09:00] [00:10:00] [00:11:00]

Don’t forget—your colloquy, your conversation with God, with Jesus about what is stirred for you.[00:12:00]

Listen again.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

 

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

 

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

 

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

 

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

 

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

 

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

 

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’

 

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

 

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

 

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

 

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

 

So, take your time to end and to return to the group. When you’re ready, switch on your screens.

Annemarie: Welcome to [00:16:00] this evening. Thanks so much for that, Brenda. We’re going to be looking tonight, as Brenda said, at the election, and we’re going to look at this area of the election, which is really at the heart of the exercises, in two parts. We’ll have this week where we’re going to focus on an overview of election and how it connects with discernment and look at what Ignatius says about it in the text. And next session, we’re going to look much more practically at how we accompany a retreatant through the process of the election.

So, let’s just start off by asking what is meant by election, and then I want to unpack a little bit before we get into the meat of what Ignatius has to say, about how it relates to discernment.

The Spanish word elección If I’m saying that correctly, those of you who are Spanish will know, but it’s E L E C C I O N, [00:17:00] elección, literally means choice. Ignatius seems to presume that most people who are making the exercises will have a choice of some significance to make. When he specifically uses the word election, we are generally talking about a choice of some particularly decisive kind of significance, usually to do with what Ignatius calls a way or state of life.

I’s a decision that is more or less a permanent one. For example, whether to take religious vows or to marry or to serve God in a single life, although it could also extend to some less permanent things like whether to study to become a teacher or a doctor, but there are decisions of some importance—some big significance for the rest of one’s life.

We also talk about reform of life, but I’ll talk about that later. I want you to stay with just defining that word election for now. [00:18:00] So, how does election relate to discernment? Now, the spiritual exercises assume three levels or layers to discernment. The most basic layer is what I want to call the development of a discerning heart. The second layer, where it’s very closely connected, is the discernment of spirits, where we sift the inner movements and inclinations, consolations, desolations, and we look for what is the source of those and where are they leading to. And the third is found in the section on making the election, and that focuses on choices and decisions and that’s the bit that we’re going to be really homing in on as we get into the meat of this material.

Those three senses of the term discernment that I’ve outlined there are very interrelated, and each of them depends on the others. John Futrell, who is a great [00:19:00] giver of the exercises—or was a great giver of the exercises, he’s died—says that discernment is embedded in the Ignatian worldview, and he gives a really powerful line about this.  I want to read it to you, and I can send you those quotes later, so don’t worry about getting them all down. He says that—

It is a dynamic view of God’s active love ceaselessly working in the world. Each new moment of life, each new concrete situation, the present condition of the individual person or community, the other persons involved, events, time, place, circumstances, all of these contain within them God’s call to which we must respond in the here and now. The Word of God bursts through the words, the events and the situations of every day.

I really love that the Word of God bursts through the words, the events, and the situations of every day. [00:20:00]

Today, we’re going to really focus on that third level of discernment, which is the process by which we might come to a decision of significance for our life and in the context of a person who is making the spiritual exercises, Howard Gray says,

Given what I know now through my prayer about who I am and who Christ is, how will I follow him authentically? That choice is the Ignatian election. Given what I know now through my prayer about who I am and who Christ is, how will I follow him authentically?

The Ignatian election is a decision that is made in the light of the ultimate relationship with God, but that touches all of the relationships in my life, and I make a choice because I realize this is what God is inviting me to be or to do. If I do this, it’s going to have [00:21:00] a powerful impact on my whole life.

Here’s another way of putting it. The election is a discernment about a key decision in one’s life, when we desire to choose that which will better lead to God’s deepening life in us. Remember that from the Principle and Foundation, way back at the beginning—that last sentence of the PNF—we’re really coming to the crux of that now.

So, if we unpack this a little bit more by just thinking about two interwoven layers or dimensions of call or vocation, each of us have a fundamental vocation to love, serve, and reverence God. We saw that in the Principle and Foundation. We’re called to serve God, to give glory to God. And given that fundamental vocation, and the person that I am, and the life circumstances in which I find myself, I will need to discern what container will best help me to live [00:22:00] that out. Is it as a married person, as an ordained person, as a single person? What way of living, or to use Ignatius’s language, what state of life will allow me to best live out that fundamental vocation to love and serve and reverence God?

Herbert Alfonso suggests that the exercises help me to come to a sense of my personal vocation, that we can come to discover God’s will in the arrangement or ordering or orientation for my life, which is my unrepeatable uniqueness. Uniqueness, the name by which God calls me, and we touched on this before; this is my deepest or truest self. This is woven into the history of my faith journey and if you look at your life, you’ll see that there is a kind of golden thread that weaves its way through your experience.

We might be called to do [00:23:00] many different ministries. A pastor might be called to preach and write and counsel and give spiritual accompaniment, but the particular flavor and texture of that call, their call, will be unique. It will be different to anyone else’s, and often there’s a particular word or phrase that resonates with our sense of who we are called to be in the world.

For me, it’s helping people to believe in and act out of their own goodness and giftedness, and the particular phrase is affirming healer, and that’s what I might do in different ways as a spiritual director, a teacher, a psychologist, a life coach, but it’s the same basic sense of personal vocation that underpins that.

So, having said all of that, which is really background stuff that I want to situate the work of the election in, I want to sum that up by saying that the work of election [00:24:00] in the exercises may help us in three ways, or may do three things. The first is, and this is what Ignatius really talks about most strongly, to discern and choose the state or way of life that will best allow me to love and serve God. Or, I might already have made that kind of choice, but I want to discern how to live it out more fully, more lovingly, more radically, with greater commitment. And that’s if I don’t need to make a decision per se, but I need to kind of say, still be able to decide, how do I live this out as fully as I can? And that is called a reform of life.  So, we get election retreat, and we get what Ignatius calls a reform of life retreat. So generally, one or the other is going on.

And at the same time, if we go with what Herbert Alfonso is saying about the personal vocation, the exercises also help us perhaps to crystallize [00:25:00] what that personal vocation is, that particular call of who I am supposed to be and what I’m called to do in the world, so all my other decisions going forward are considered against the touchstone of that personal vocation. Does it align with that core sense of who I’m called to be in the world?

Another way of understanding election is that it’s not so much about what you decide as it’s a revelation that you await, that it’s something that is revealed by God to you in the retreat that is made clear to you by God. It’s God’s revelation of something new that is precisely for you, but this doesn’t mean the exercitant or the one making the exercises should not still do the necessary work to open themselves to what God will show them. So, the work of this part of the exercises is often about [00:26:00] readying oneself, opening oneself.  So, this way of understanding sees election as God’s election of me, God’s choosing of me. The way that I perceive that God has been calling me and molding me over the years through my faith history.

Having given you that backdrop, let’s look now at election and reform of life, specifically in the spiritual exercises. You might remember way back when, I think it was lecture two or lecture three, in the very first module, we spoke about the purpose of the exercises and many of you chose to write about the purpose of the exercises in your assignment.[00:27:00]

You might recall that we spoke about there being those people who took an electionist point of view, and they insisted that the making of an election or a decision, key decision about one’s state and way of life, was intrinsic to the exercises, key to the exercises. Then there were the perfectionists, and they put the focus on conversion and growth leading to union with God and kind of downplay the centrality of the election and there’s still quite a lot of ambiguity about this in the literature, in the reading around it.

Ivens talks about the election in his book, Understanding the Spiritual Exercises, says that there doesn’t have to be a serious decision to be made within the context of the exercises for them to be valid, and that one shouldn’t try to manufacture a decision if there isn’t one. So sometimes there just isn’t a big decision to be made. [00:28:00] Those decisions have already been made and that’s fine. One can make a wonderful spiritual exercises without an election because it might be about a process of deepening without the need for any new decision to be made.

Ivens also says that we shouldn’t downplay the centrality of a significant decision being part of the exercises, that even if there isn’t an election to be made, even if your exercitant has already made all the biggest decisions about career and whether they’re married or single or ordained or religious or whatever it is. Even if those things are all tied up as it were, it’s generally always the case that more and more the writers are saying, and those that are practicing in this field that we want to make some kind of decision about how we’re going to live this with [00:29:00] deeper fidelity to Christ going forward. We want to come out of this with a kind of a sense of clarity, a sense of resolution, a sense of something of that weightiness.

I think that makes a lot of sense when you remember that Ignatius is very practical. He’s very grounded in reality, and there is a need, in his understanding, for the exercises to bear fruit in very practical terms. It’s not just about this experience of consolation in the moment, in these nine months, or in this 30-day retreat. It’s about how am I going to live differently from here on out. What difference will it have made that I’ve made the exercises? And some of that is a kind of conscious, intentional way of making a choice, whether that’s an election, a big choice, or whether it’s a, how do I live my big choices more faithfully or a form of life choice.[00:30:00]

It’s often said that the exercises are a privileged time for making a serious decision. The process is designed with the end in mind, to help a person come to a place of the greatest possible spiritual freedom out of which a good decision can be made. And Howard Gray talks about the importance of the culture or the environment of the exercises in which a person is really steeped in prayer and silence and a particular depth of focus. It’s a kind of privileged space in which to be making this kind of big decision. We may never again have the advantage, the grace of that kind of focused prayer time as we get in the time of the exercises.

So, what are the essential conditions to really discern, to discern God’s will, God’s [00:31:00] desire?

Well, first of all, it’s really openness to the Holy Spirit. That openness to the Holy Spirit involves, first of all, a sincere intention to do what God wants, no matter the cost, and an intense and persevering desire and asking to know God’s will. We have to want it, to ask for it, to seek for it, accompanied by faith that God will lead me to know it; that when I ask for it, when I seek it with all my heart, God is going to reveal that to me. God wants to reveal that to me.

The third thing is to be indifferent to the alternatives of the choices. I want whatever God wants. Remember indifference; another word for that is freedom. I want to be able to hold everything in terms of the options lightly so that I can be moved [00:32:00] in freedom and not swayed by my attachments, by selfish desires, by fears, by unfreedoms. So, we are trying to get to the place of the greatest possible freedom to undertake this election.

It’s important to maybe just be aware that this indifference or this freedom doesn’t mean that the person has to necessarily be free from all attraction to or aversion from the alternatives, but they need to be free from the power of these to sway their judgment or to lock them in or to limit their freedom. As long as the desire to know and do God’s will is greater than any attractions or preferences, there is Ignatian indifference.

So, on a practical level, how does this develop? How does this readiness develop? Well, all of the stuff that we’ve been doing right from the very beginning with the disposition [00:33:00] days, with the PNF has been an attempt to get to this place of freedom.

A positive image of God—we’ve spoken a lot about that positive image of God. You can’t discern or make an election out of a negative image of God or an unhelpful image of God. There’s got to be a sense of a God who desires the best for me, a God who lovingly wants the best for me, to have reflected on their faith story so that they can see that golden thread and that strand and the kinds of things that God has been nudging them and drawing them to all along. They need a living relationship with Jesus and that’s also being developed in the course of the exercises. A healthy understanding of God’s will as God’s desires that meet my own deepest desires that are congruent with my own deepest desires, that God puts God’s desires deep within me, and not that God’s will is way over there, and something [00:34:00] completely divorced from, what’s going on deep within me. And it has to be a really reflective way of living, which hopefully is really there by the time the person’s deeply into the exercises in the second week.

So, where and how does the election fit into the overall structure and dynamic of the exercises? Jean-Marc Laporte uses the image of a funnel to talk about how the election is the focal point of the exercises. I’m going to read you what he says, and it’s quite a long quote, so I’m going to send it to you. Don’t frantically try to grasp it all, but I just want you to get the idea of it, the feel of it.

I begin very broadly with praise of God and creation, PNF, and little by little, I’m drawn into a narrower and clearer focus. Praise becomes reverence and intention [00:35:00] to overcome sin and conform myself to God. First week.

Then I concentrate on what this conformity might mean for me, and I am led to the moment of election. So, I kind of go from this broadness through these phases into that moment of election. And then having made an election, I’m gently brought back through implementation to interaction with the whole world, which becomes the setting in which I allow myself to be an instrument of God’s purpose for me  and through me for the world.

So having made the election, the election leads me out into service of others. It leads me into the world. It leads me into a mission and ministry. Okay. So, there’s a starting from broad, narrowing into the election and from the election, as we go third and fourth [00:36:00] week into the contemplation on love, there’s a broadening out into that contemplative in action stance, that way of finding God in all things and living out my vocation in the world.

Laporte says—

The before is defined by the narrowing of my focus, the after by the broadening of my insertion into the world and experience of it as I live out the chosen project under God.

So, to put it another way, The whole first part of the exercises are a preparation for the election. They are constructed to build up the necessary dispositions, the desire to praise, reverence, and serve God.

Indifference—remember that comes right in the PNF. We are already asking for that indifference. Affective freedom and a general Christification of outlook. I love that word. [00:37:00] Ivens uses it, and I haven’t really heard it anywhere else, but it’s a kind of sense of we take on the mind and heart of Christ as we are praying with the second week particularly. Once the election is made, it’s offered for confirmation in the third and the fourth weeks. So that’s where it kind of sits in the structure of the exercises as a whole.

So how does it fit into the structure and dynamic of the second week? So, let’s think about the second week piece, which is obviously where it fits.

In the second week, the directee or the one making the exercises contemplates the life of Jesus. First, the hidden life, then the public life and develops this intimate relationship with him coming to know. in and through relationship, the values of Jesus and Jesus’s way of being and engaging. At the experience [00:38:00] of contemplating the life of Christ and the process of coming to election are woven inextricably together.

We think of the analogy of a human relationship. The more deeply we grow in love for another person, the more we acquire the sensitivity that allows us to recognize what is in line with that love and what might be in disharmony with it or in conflict with it. And as that praying is happening alongside it, we remember there’s another process going on.

We’ve been looking at that the last two weeks. Ignatius inserts those three key meditations. The three structured exercises, which are to hone our freedom so that in this process of making the election, we’re at the greatest possible place of freedom at this point in our life.

So, you remember that the two standards, the three classes and the three modes of humility or three ways of loving and these are designed to help the exercitant grow in [00:39:00] that spiritual freedom so that they are able to choose what better leads to their deepening relationship with God so that they’re aware of the attachments. They’re aware of the unfreedoms. They’ve really prayed into that in a way that has become more and more subtle, more finely tuned.

Okay.  It’s right alongside those key meditations that this is going to happen. After the two standards, we’re going to position it, and alongside the three classes and the three modes of humility is where it’s positioned.

What does Ignatius himself say about the election? So, the first time that Ignatius starts to introduce the election is just before presenting the meditation on the two standards. If you open your book, and go to paragraph [00:40:00] 169, there is a preamble—a preamble for making an election and it’s a long preamble so I’m not going to read the whole thing, but I’m going to read a little snippet of it to you. I’m reading from Ivens’ translation, which might be slightly different from Fleming, but it’s the same text.

In every good election, insofar as it depends on us, the “I” of our intention should be simple. I should look only at what I have been created for, namely the praise of God our Lord and the salvation of my soul, taking me back to the PNF.

Therefore, whatever my choice might be, it must help me towards the end for which I have been created, and I must not make the end fit the means. but subordinate the means to the end.

So, what’s [00:41:00] most important is the end for which I’m created, and I look at that. And when I really see what that is, I start to discern what container, what way of being in the world, what decisions can best allow me to live out this life, this end for which I am created.

So, he says—

It often happens, for example, that people choose first of all to marry, which is a means, and secondly to serve God in married life, though the service of God is the end. Others similarly wish first to possess church benefices and then to serve God in them.

People like this do not go straight to God. They want God to come straight to their disordered attachments. Consequently, they make a means of the end, an end of the means. And so, what they ought to put first, they put last.

So, at the end he says—

To sum up, nothing ought to induce [00:42:00] me either to adopt such means or reject them except the soul service and praise of God our Lord and the eternal salvation of my soul.

Okay. So really, he’s taking us back to remind us that this is the crux around making the decision. We have to keep the end as the first thing in mind.

Ignatius then invites the retreated into praying with the two standards and the three classes, and this is going alongside the praying on the life of Jesus, and we’re going to talk more about that in upcoming sessions, so that piece will fall into place later.

The remaining material on the election falls into three parts. Paragraphs 170 to 174 are four directives regarding the scope of [00:43:00] election. Then we get the times or modes of election, and then he talks a little bit about amendment and reform of life.

As we approach this material, particularly if you’re looking at a more literal translation, it’s very important to remember the 16th century context in which Ignatius was writing and our understanding of human development and psychological limitations on freedom is very much greater now than Ignatius would have had in his own time. We just need to hold that in mind.

If we look at paragraph 170 and we look at the first point, it says,

When we are making a decision or choice, we are not deliberating about choices which involve sin, but rather we are [00:44:00] considering alternatives which are legitimate and good within our Catholic Church and not a bad or opposed to her.

Don’t worry too much about “within our Catholic Church.” Remember he’s writing as a man in his time, but what he’s really saying there is, we can only discern between two good things. or two matters that are equally morally indifferent or good in themselves. So, you can’t discern to do something that goes against God, and that’s pretty obvious, I would say, but he’s kind of making, he’s making that point.

Then he talks about a second point. Okay. He says—

There are choices which represent permanent commitments, such as marriage, priesthood, and the perpetual commitment within religious life. And there are other choices which can be changed such as seeking after a successful career in business or medicine, or a decision to live according to a certain [00:45:00] lifestyle for a set time.

He makes a kind of a point here that there are some things, and he puts it in quite strong language when he puts it in the more literal version. He says, “There are some things which are unchangeable. which involve an unchangeable election, such as marriage, priesthood, etc.”

So, this point about elections being unchangeable, all these big decisions that might previously have been made being unchangeable is quite complex in our own time and we’ll talk about this. I’m going to give that to Russell to help us with next week, but he’s basically saying that if you’ve already made a permanent commitment, you don’t easily put that up as something that is kind of for rethinking. It’s something that’s already in place.

Maybe just to say one more thing about that. You know, our modern understanding of human [00:46:00] development could make a case for the need sometimes to leave vowed life if the situation were destructive of oneself and one’s relationship with God or a marriage.

If, you know, one had lacked the necessary maturity when one entered into that. We need to have space to unpack that a little bit more.

The third point is that when an unchangeable election has been made; so, say you’ve already made one of these big decisions, if it wasn’t well made, he says, “one should repent and try to lead a good life within the election that one has made.” So, kind of, you know, well, that’s okay, you have to do the best you can within the context in which you find yourself, and maybe it’s then a reform of life. How do I live this as well as I can?

The fourth one—in matters where an election can be changed, if someone has already made an [00:47:00] election in a proper and rightly ordered way, he says, “there’s no reason to make it over again.” If I made an election to be a doctor and I can change that, but it’s been made in a good way and I don’t kind of feel like there’s anything that’s not leading me towards God about that decision, I don’t need to rethink it.

That’s kind of basically giving an overview of his kind of thoughts about what things, decisions can be made about and what things, it’s more difficult to be making decisions about.

Then we get to the three times [00:48:00] or three modes of making decisions—three times when a correct and good choice of a state or way of life may be made.

This really is “the how,” how this perhaps happens, and you might be familiar with this already. I’m going to just talk you through them. The first time is, he says, “When God, our Lord, so moves and attracts the will that without doubting or being able to doubt, such a devout soul follows what is shown to it as St. Paul or St. Matthew did in following Christ.”

So that moment when the election is just given you, you just know that you have been called to do something. You don’t even have to really make a decision. The decision is kind of just so clear. I call it the blinding flash that helps me to remember it. I think of Saul on the way to Damascus and the sense of everything suddenly has changed. Everything is clear.

Another example could [00:49:00] be the story of Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa explained that inspiration came to her when she was on a train to Darjeeling in the Himalayas. What she heard was a call to give up everything a second time, this time to follow Jesus to those who, like him, had nowhere to lay their heads, who were naked, despised, forsaken. And this is what she says—

I was going to Darjeeling to make my retreat. It was on that retreat, on that train, but I heard the call to give up everything and follow him into the slums, to serve him in the poorest of the poor. I just knew it was his will and that I had to follow him. There was no doubt that it was to be his work. The message was quite clear. I was to leave the convent and work with the poor while living among them.

So sometimes that decision comes with a clarity and a force and a conviction that we just know that it’s [00:50:00] clear. That might remind you of something. I hope it rings a bell in terms of the rules for discernment of spirits for the second week when we talked about that consolation without previous cause, that sense that sometimes God just really comes in and shows us something with such clarity and such conviction and consolation that it is clear. So that’s a first-time decision.

A decisional election in the second time—the second mode or way is about attending to inner movements of consolation and desolation. He says about this, “The second, when enough light and knowledge is received by the experience of consolations and desolations, and by the experience of the discernment of various spirits.” So here Ignatius is talking about situations when we have that sense of being pulled by inner movements, [00:51:00] good and bad spirits, consolations, desolations, feelings, thoughts, imagination, stuff is being stirred within us and we’re backwards-ing and forward-ing in relation to our feelings around the decision.

So, the decision in this case is made on the basis of tested consolation. We’re looking for which option gives us the deepest sense of consolation, the deepest sense of peace and there are practical ways of doing that, which we’ll touch on next time. That takes a lot of skill. On the part of the director or the one listening to listen for the movements of the spirits and to try and get a sense of which option is really the one that seems to be where the greatest sense of consolation resides.

The third time is what we call the use of reason, and that’s [00:52:00] usually when there’s not a lot of pull going on. There’s not a lot of inner upping and downing and backward-ing and forwards-ing. It’s just a kind of quiet space of being open to either option or not being quite sure which one. Then there is an invitation to use reason, to consider first of all that thing in the preamble, what we are created for—to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord. Be asking God, well, which of these two options is going to do that? Then weighing them— weighing the pros and the cons using what’s called the four-column method, which we’ll talk about next week, looking for where the greatest fruit might be, looking for where the greatest impact might be.

There are two ways of doing that, of making a good and sound election in that third time, and we’ll leave that for next week when we look at the practicalities of all of this.

Almost the last piece that I want to [00:53:00] mention here is about confirmation. So, in whichever mode a decision is come to, is reached, we offer that to God for confirmation. We say, “Lord, it seems like on the basis of this discernment and having really prayed through this decision that this is what it is that I sense that you are asking me to do. This is the option that I feel will please you the most.” Remember, this is a very relational thing. It’s about what is going to be for the greater deepening of my relationship with God and what God wants for me and for my role in the world.

When we come to that place and we have a tentative decision, we ask for that confirmation, which might come in part from the external environment. If I run up against absolute obstacles that mean that decision is not workable, that my context will not allow it, that might be a [00:54:00] disconfirmation. Barry points out that for Ignatius, the final criterion of the genuineness of a call of God is, “Can it be carried out in the real world where other agents also have a say?”

And he says that—

Drawing from the experience of Ignatius, who you might remember had discerned at Manresa that he was called by God to go and minister in the Holy Land but was refused permission by the head of the Franciscans, and eventually concluded that, his decision, his discernment must not be correct.

It was not being confirmed by God. He concluded that it wasn’t God’s will, but it’s not only external circumstances, it’s also the noticing as I journey into the third week and the cost of discipleship going with Jesus into his passion, is there still a sense of peace in this decision? Is there still a feeling that this fits, that it’s right? That it settles within me, even if it feels costly, even if it feels hard. [00:55:00] Is there a sense that there is a sense of God’s peace in it? Often the third week is really the time where that confirmation has space to happen.

The last thing I want to talk about is in paragraph 189.  You will see it talks about reform of life, and you can go and read that. It talks about a number of reasons why an election might not be made. The one reason is if the person has already made an unchangeable election, or they are already embedded in a way and state of life. So, for example, a Jesuit making the exercises for the second time, might not be making an election the second time they make the exercises because they’ve already made their election retreat. They’re already kind of [00:56:00] in a particular way and state of life or someone is already married with children or maybe if they’re an older person—that sort of thing.

Secondly, they might not be currently faced by a sufficiently substantial issue, or they’re not ready to make an election. Sometimes, although the exercises are a very privileged space for making an election, they might not be in a place for that. The first time I made the exercises, I made the exercises as a young person of 20 going on 21, and I was far from ready to make a final kind of big permanent decision about how I would live away in state of life. It wasn’t the right time of life to do that. So, I was making smaller kinds of decisions that were more around the way I was living my life, more this reform of life.

So, when there isn’t an election to be made for whatever reason, Ignatius suggests [00:57:00] giving very good consideration to practical matters of how the person’s going to live their life going forward and that could include issues like, how am I going to live my life of prayer? How will I conduct my family life, my business life? There might also be some more substantive things like, you know, should I immigrate? Should I change the focus of my work? Those kinds of things could still be very big decisions that might kind of be election decisions or there might be kind of tweaking or shift variations on my main decisions, and so there might be reform of life. The distinction is not critical, but it can be helpful and useful.

So just to remind you as we come to the end of this, I want to highlight that there are three key things to remember.

The first is that the exercises are especially helpful for someone who is [00:58:00] faced with a significant decision. And so, you know, also people may not realize that there is something going on in their life about which it might be helpful to make a decision. So, we’ll talk more about that next week.

Secondly, that Ignatian indifference or spiritual freedom is the critical factor [underline, underline, underline] when someone is entering into an election. If someone is coming to the election and they are unfree, they are clinging to one of the options in terms of a decision that they need to make between two options, and that clinging is coming from a place of unfreedom, they need to pray more to come to that place of freedom before they make the election.

And Ignatius offers some very practical help for the process of discernment and that we will do in part two. [00:59:00] This is really about part one, just the overview, the broad understanding of what we’re talking about, what Ignatius says in the text. How do we practically do this with our retreatant? Watch the space and we will talk more about that next time.

So, we are on the hour now, exactly. The reflection questions are in the chat. Thank you, Pam, and if we can take 15 minutes now til quarter past the hour to sit with that, and then we’ll come back for our small groups.

Annemarie: [01:01:00] We’re going to open the screen for discussion and our engagements. Wondering how it’s been thinking about the election, thinking about reform of life? Becky?

Becky: I have two things. Number one—I’ve been praying about how to reimagine, but the word election from my reformed, Calvinistic background is a word that I find almost triggering. It’s like a lightning word that just because of what it stands for and just to be aware of the pasts of the retreatant, and [01:02:00]  even in our Western world over here, that whole thing and then you have the whole political situation with the political election, which is so fraught. Just how to use a different word that gets at the beauty of what Ignatius was getting at. I’ve just been praying about how to do that.  How can I move through that and with the integrity of Ignatius do that?

Annemarie, Marie, I’ve been doing this for a while, but you gave me an image and I really want you to tell me if this is not true today when you were talking and you used that image of the funnel, [01:03:00] about how disposition days—week one, week two, we get clearer and clearer and more clarifying of who we are and who Christ is in us and our partnership with Christ in the world and then I almost got this image of an hourglass as once we go through that funnel, we come out and we’re more than we were, and there’s almost this hourglass that happens with week three and week four as love just grows and expands within us and our world, which is such a beautiful thing. I’m just wondering if that is true to Ignatius and does that like work? So those are my two little things.

Annemarie: Well, I think two very substantial and important things. Thank you, Becky. [01:04:00] Let’s maybe start with that second one and absolutely, I think you’ve got it. You express that beautifully with that hourglass image. That’s exactly right. You put it with such a clarity and such passion, and I think that it captures exactly what I’m trying to convey and what Ignatius was doing there. It crystallizes something in the center of that hourglass, and that does connect us with a bigger sense as we go out then into living that in the world. That’s a beautiful sense of that dynamic and how that works. Thank you for that image. I think it’s spot on.

In terms of the first, that’s really interesting and I’m so glad you brought that up because it’s not something I would have even realized or thought about.[01:05:00] had you not mentioned it. It really expands my understanding and my awareness. I think that when we see something is unhelpful because the language or the word is going to bring up stuff that gets in the way and that pulls people in a different direction, we need to be saying, well, what other language can we use that’s not going to have that impact.  I’m really glad that you’re thinking about that and I’m wondering if you’ve come up with any ideas?

Becky: Well, we talked about it in group because I was just really super curious and my gals, they are spot on. The word choice is actually one and then even the Spanish word for discernment. [01:06:00]is helpful too with what actually he is driving at, and so perhaps just the choices or the choice that is going to be made, whether it’s an actual big choice or a reform of life or a decision or even discernment, but I haven’t gotten much farther than that.

Annemarie: Yeah, but it’s opening up a really important thing for us to think more about. If it’s an okay question to ask you, Becky, I would—not coming from the same tradition—not maybe having kind of experienced what you’ve been through, I would love to understand a little bit more what someone coming from that tradition [01:07:00] might hear when they hear the word election. What does that mean for people in that coming from that context? What does it evoke?

It’s the Calvinist theology of where some are in and some are out and if you are elected, you are the chosen and you are in, and therefore everybody else is out.

Annemarie: Mm-hmm. I get you.

Becky: And so, there’s that. And then, also too I know you’ve been following the political situation over here.

Annemarie: That one’s easy.

Becky: That one’s easy, but it’s kind of this Calvinist reformed, which for me, has put a lot of baggage that I’m still lifting off of me—just  [01:08:00] the whole thing.

Annemarie: Thank you, Becky. Thanks for explaining that, and I think that’s a really helpful awareness to just be conscious of what does the word election mean for the person that I’m sitting with? And what does it evoke? And is it a helpful word or an unhelpful word?

I just want to see if Trevor or Russell has something they would like to put in the mix there.

Russell: Curiously, I pulled Joe Tetlow’s folder off my shelf quickly to have a look. He doesn’t use the word election at all, and he’s writing from the US context.

He talks about making life choices and he talks about when we come to important decisions and choices; there’s no election. It’s all around the question of decisions [01:09:00] and choices, but he is specifying what kind of choice—a life choice, so it’s interesting just to note very quickly that Joe doesn’t use that language at all.

Annemarie: Thanks for that, Russell. That is interesting. Trevor.

Trevor: Yeah, I just thought that also just to balance things a little bit, you were saying Annemarie there’s a sense in the word election for Ignatius in the sense that God elects and I’m all for the emphasis on, as an alternative to look in terms of life choices and decisions, but I was wondering about the divine side of election and whether a possible alternative could be an exploration of God’s calling in my life [01:10:00] or God’s callings in my life, that some of that calling is fundamental and some of that calling is dynamic and unfolding in terms of the seasons of my life.

So, I guess in terms of language-ing, I’m wondering about God’s calling or God’s callings just to also have a sense of God’s action as well.

Annemarie: Thanks, Trevor. So, looking at it from the other side—what Russell was bringing out there about life choices, that kind of what we do in response and the calling is God’s action in relation to this whole thing. Yeah. Thank you, Trevor.

Russell: Also very rudimentary, looking at etymology in Spanish, it talks about “to call or to hold.”  We’d have to go further into that. I’m [01:11:00] not a Spanish speaker, but sometimes we translate things into English, and we lose the etymology of the word, so just exactly what Trevor just said about a call, you know?

Annemarie: Yeah. Thanks, Russell. Okay, so let’s pause that, but maybe keep journeying with it and keep it on our radar. Tracy, and then MaddyChristine.

Tracy: So, this is kind of a two-part question where the first part kind of bleeds into the second part, so I’ll try to make the best sense of it as I can. We were kind of talking about even just the crossover between election and reform of life and how it seems like, you know, election naturally creates a reform of life. Like when you’ve made a big decision, it makes a reform of life and then flip flop when you make a reform of life, sometimes that [01:12:00] leads to an election. And I think as we started talking about that, it almost created some confusion about election versus reform of life, and this bleeds into my second question, because then that made me start thinking about the VIM model and when we have a vision—you know, and the VIM model is the vision, intention, and means, and Annemarie, when you were kind of talking about your vocational calling, you had like a line that said, this is how I know I’m in my vocation, even though I might be doing different things.

It just made me wonder even about thinking about vocational calling and election around that vision versus an actual black and white decision of like, I’m going to become a priest or I’m going to get married or whatever the actual decision was.

And then the follow up to that. because I brought up the VIM model. my group was asking me to explain it[01:13:00] and I didn’t do a great job and so I wondered if Trevor could do a quick explanation for me, based off of Dallas. I didn’t pass the test, Trevor. I’m sorry.

Annemarie: Okay, great. Thank you, Tracy. Gosh, that’s a multi layered, wonderful question with lots of bits to it. Maybe I can say one or two things and then hand over to Trevor and maybe he can say whatever he’s going to say and explain the VIM model in the same moment.

I think you’re right. I think there’s a nuanced kind of complexity. There’s an interrelatedness going on that in a way the distinction between election and reform of life in one sense is a bit artificial, a little bit academic, because in real life so often there’s a kind of an interplay between the two, and sometimes it’s not even [01:14:00] clear whether something’s an election or a form of life necessarily. And in practice, in a way, it doesn’t really matter, but it’s kind of saying, you know, there are some decisions which are kind of massive in the import and there’s sometimes a thing about living out the massive decisions that have already been made.

So, I think it can be helpful in terms of when you have someone practically in front of you who’s in the retreat and you’re trying to think a little bit around how do I help this person? Is there something that they are needing to make a decision around? I think it’s just a helpful way of thinking it through. Maybe they’re coming in and saying, there’s this really big thing that feels like it’s dominating the whole retreat. [01:15:00] This is what this whole retreat is about, or this is the big thing that’s emerged in the retreat, and sometimes it’s a much subtler thing where it’s really just a kind of sensing of, how do I live into what I’m doing and what I’ve already kind of been drawn into or called to more fully, but I think it’s only really helpful insofar as it helps the director to do a good job or not. It doesn’t really matter whether you call it an election or a form of life with the person. I’m not sure that’s helpful or not but, I think there’s something about that personal vocation piece, that vision piece, that becomes almost the criterion for life’s decisions going forward.

I think [01:16:00] that if the exercises allow someone to get to a point of knowing better who they are and who they’re called to be in the world, that in itself is maybe the greatest gift that they get in the exercises because then every decision that arises afterwards, you kind of are looking at that sense of who I’m called to be in the world as your kind of touchstone. So, I think there’s something really kind of important about that. Maybe Trevor can shed some light on it, especially as he knows about VIM and I don’t, so I’m not even going to go there.

Trevor: Very briefly, Dallas offers the model of VIM as a reliable pattern for life change; that life change often happens—not always—but often happens when one has some vision for one’s life. [01:17:00] That would tie in a little bit Annemarie with the sense of who I am and who am I called to be in the world, but that that by itself is not sufficient. There needs to be a measure of intention and desire to really incarnate that—to bring that into being as it were. This could also fit a little bit with the exercises. The ”M” meaning that vision and intention is not sufficient by itself. There needs to be some practical means by which all of that gets expressed within the particulars of one’s life and one’s world. So that’s perhaps some possibilities of interconnection there. I hope that’s helpful. [01:18:00]

Annemarie: Thanks, Trevor. I think there’s an article to be written on this. Tracy?

Tracy: I have a larger paper to write right now. Thank you.

Annemarie: Down the line. Down the line. Thanks for that, Tracy. MaddyChristine.

MaddyChristine: I’m wondering, Annemarie, if you can just say more about the phrase that you found for yourself for your life. I just found that so beautiful. You said, “affirmed healer.” Like, where does that fit into the election, that one might sit with that and come up with that?

Annemarie: Well, I think it’s something about kind of trying to get to the essence of what is the [01:19:00] sense of who I feel I am called to be in the world. So not even so much what am I called to do, but what is the quality of presence or the way of being that I sense God inviting me to.

I guess that’s something that I’ve kind of sensed out of reflecting on my life and the work that I do and the people that I see and what feels most important in terms of when I’m working in sync with God. When I feel really grounded in my relationship with God and what I’m doing in the world, that feels like words that I can put on that experience that capture it.

So, affirming is about kind of the sense of encouraging, [01:20:00] supporting, believing in the other and the healing part is really around trying to bring a quality of presence that allows people to heal and to become more whole in their lives, whether it’s emotionally or spiritually or on whatever level. So, those two words together capture something of a sense of how I’ve come to know myself in terms of the kind of presence that I can bring in the world when I’m really responding to God and in sync with God.

I think that when people are going through the exercises, it’s a kind of a process, partly of it can be really helpful to get them to read that little book by Herbert Alphonso, even at around this time of the election. It’s such a tiny little book, but [01:21:00] it really kind of captures this thing of what is my particular way, my unique presence that I bring into the world? Is there a word or a phrase that perhaps captures something of that? And it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to stick with the exact same word or exact same phrase my whole life, but it will be more or less the same because I’m not going to completely change. This is very much fundamental to who I’ve discovered myself to be when one’s found that phrase, but it might get tweaked. It might get slightly shifted as I find a word that better expresses it.

I think it’s a helpful thing to do with people in the time of election to help them to reflect on that kind of thing—just  noticing what is it about me and the way God has made me that I bring into the world naturally in a way that is [01:22:00] life giving for myself and for other people. Does that help?

MaddyChristine: Yeah, It really stood out for me; even for me to be aware of it.  I just think it’s so practical for people and I think really beautiful for people to engage with. and I loved what you said, “my unrepeatable uniqueness.” It just fits in also with the sitting under God’s long and loving gaze. It was beautiful to me.

Annemarie:  Thanks, Maddie.  Anything that you want to particularly add, Trevor or Russell, before we move on to Diana?

Trevor: Maybe just to say very quickly that I think being able to put words to that, it also draws[01:23:00]—I’m thinking of the funnel. It begins to draw one now into the wider world, and this is not a privatized experience, but one that has an apostolic dimension, and this is what I’m bringing to the world.

Annemarie: Thanks, Trevor.

Russell: I do have an article, Annemarie, which talks a little bit about Herbert Alfonso as well, but it’s just called Listening for Your Name, Hearing Your Purpose,  which we can share with people. I just have to find the source of it, but I think it’s actually quite a nice little article and it uses the work of Alfonso as well.

Annemarie: So, we’ll send that to you next week. Thanks, Russell. Diana? Have I lost Diana? [01:24:00]

Diana: I have a wondering and  I’m trying to formulate the question. I’m wondering what the role of grief and forgiveness, perhaps for past decisions or choices that people have made and were impacted by those choices, and what the role of grief would be in this process of election, or in the exercises.

And the context of that is when I went through the exercises, I experienced a significant traumatic loss, so when I look back, I see this as a reform of life [01:25:00] but I was being led through a process of grief and forgiveness. I don’t know how usual that is if we’re leading other retreatants. Life happens, right? What is the role of grief in election? If we question our past decisions, how that might impact our confidence in ourselves to make good decisions for God, or[01:26:00] even trust in a loving and good God if we’ve been hurt by the past, you know. Does that make sense?

Annemarie: It does. It really does, Diana. That’s a really, really deep thing that you’re bringing into the space, and I think something powerful to think about. Thank you for sharing a little bit, just the context out of which that comes—your own experience of grief in that process of the exercises and the election.

I think there’s probably something very unique obviously to each person’s journey and each person’s process through the exercises and the election, and I think that you’re alerting us to something that we maybe need to be very sensitive to [01:27:00] and very attentive to; that   there may be a sense in which trust is difficult in that moment.

It’s scary to make new decisions because of what’s happened in the past and how those decisions panned out and there may be a kind of healing dimension that’s needed in that process and that might have happened in the first week. Perhaps if there’d been a space for it, it might have, for some people come up a little bit earlier in the process.

It might come up in some of the contemplations around the life of Jesus in relation to some of the early life of Jesus—Jesus trying to make decisions, but I think it’s about giving space to that experience and allowing and slowing down that time of the election to allow there to be space [01:28:00] for whatever feelings there are about decisions and past decisions. And maybe for there to be quite a bit of colloquy and being with God around those past decisions, hearing what God has to say in terms of bringing some freedom and some healing that the letting go could happen to make space for something new.

I think it’s such a sensitive issue, such a sensitive place, that it would depend so much how you approach it on the particular person and their particular experience. One of the things I would say is one would not want to rush. to give space. I would love to know what Trevor has to say or Russell, because I think this is something very, very helpful for us to hear.[01:29:00]

Trevor: May I just underline my appreciation for the question and for the wondering very, very much.  I’m a little hesitant, I think, to say anything which might sound trivial. I also wonder whether it could provide an opportunity—and I don’t know how to put this— for some kind of reflection upon past decisions, or maybe a decision that has been painful or been the source of grief and I’m just wondering about how that God, in God’s goodness, [01:30:00] can actually become, in terms of reflecting upon that, a resource for some kind of wisdom in terms of moving forward as well. I’m wondering just about the possibilities of God’s redemptive presence in some of the pain of our past and in the process of shaping our future and wondering how God can kind of draw that into the person that God is making me at this moment or creating me to be at this moment. I don’t know if that’s clear, Diana, but I don’t know how that lands. Yeah.

Russell: [01:31:00] know, Trevor, in just listening to you there, I think language is just so important in all this as well. What you’re saying there about what God is shaping, I think that can be just such a doorway as well to healing, to something new that it’s not a question of me having to deal with the difficulty of a past decision or the grief or whatever happened, but it’s a sense of, I don’t actually need to be doing anything yet except maybe allowing God to shape this. And if I’m in that shaping space, I think there’s a very different kind of feel to it than saying, “Okay, well, I’ve got to make an election. I’ve got to make a decision.” That language is just so important, and the language itself can be quite healing.

Annemarie: [01:32:00] Diana, I don’t know if you want to say anything in response and also just wondering if there was anything your director did that was particularly helpful for you that we can learn from or that you would have liked them to have done in that moment.

Diana: I think what Russell and Trevor pointed out about the shaping, changing the language of the situation resonates for me. I think at the time; my spiritual director just created that space. I think I would have liked to have had things kind of just held [01:33:00] for me, a not feel like I have to rush through this process or have it done.

Unfortunately, it was part of a program, so there was pressure to have to get through this. Now, looking back. I can say I can see the grace and the gift at that time, but I’m not sure that I was able to see it then and I think that’s okay. I think giving space for the retreatant to say, “This isn’t a wonderful time for me,” but trusting that God is still in it and that He’s still shaping, and He’s still creating in that process.

Annemarie: Thank you very much, Diane.

Russell: You know, Annemarie, here’s something else there as well, which I think we’ve said so [01:34:00] many times, and this is actually the beauty of the exercises. Once again, how this is not a sausage machine, but we talk about adapting and how when one finds or is confronted with someone that one is journeying with that’s in this space, how we can adapt it to the moment or the place or the space that the person finds themselves in—that we don’t actually have to say, “Okay, well, let’s keep moving forward.”

We can actually, adapt and I think that’s what Ignatius would have wanted. Even the way he sets it up, and what you presented tonight, there’s already a kind of flexibility there in the whole, and a sense that we can adapt this. So also, just to hold that as well in our minds that there’s space here to adapt it to the person’s present context.

Annemarie:  Thanks, Russell. [01:35:00] We’ve got just a couple of minutes left. I’m not sure how far we’ll get. We’ve got Vivianne and we may get to Liz. We will try, but let’s just see how, how far we go.

Vivianne: Maybe it’ll be quick, but I think it’s what Russell and you were bringing about the name. Josie had a really interesting question for our group if we had experienced ourselves being called by a new name. and it really struck me how she brought it as a really practical kind of exercise that might work well to help people not go binary on whether it’s a reform or an election. This idea of Tetlow’s poem, You’ve Called Me By Name and then tracing it back to creation. Is God using name to create identity in the sense of being and characteristics and traits, which you [01:36:00] touched on, and that’s where it all came out of was your affirmed healer.

So, I I’m just thinking for myself how it might be helpful to invite people to listen for the name that God is calling them or the name He’s giving them and that that would lead both into a deeper sense of identity, freedom, answering of questions and the apostolic outgoing.

It just was interesting the way Josie said it, like it just was such a simple idea that could affirm people’s identity and calling in such a deep way of considering the name that Jesus is giving you in this time.

Annemarie: I love that. I think that’s wonderful. Thank you Vivianne for sharing that and thank you Josie for bringing that into the group because I think that’s, powerful and definitely something I will hold on to from this session. Beautiful question. Thank you. [01:37:00] Liz, you’ve got time if it’s a quick one.

Liz:  I just wanted to say  that I identify with Diana because my husband died the third week of my retreat He dropped dead suddenly, and I was just filled with grief, and the third week was an ideal time because I could identify with Jesus on the cross with his mother at the foot of the cross with his grieving apostles and the whole theme was around God loving me in my grief. We took it away from choosing anything, but with just God’s presence with me, holding me, loving me, and rescuing me from being swallowed up.

Annemarie: Thank you so much for sharing that with us, Liz. It sounds like something [01:38:00] very profound that that should happen in the third week, and that there would be space to really hold it in that time. Thank you, Liz. If anyone else wants to pick that up. Maybe we can just hold that gift of that sharing. Thank you, Liz.  I’m going to hand over to Trevor to bring our time to an end with a prayer.

Trevor: I’m sure this will be familiar to many of you, but on the day that I got ordained—so, that was the day that a big choice had been made—someone gave me a poem that night and I think the poem [01:39:00] will be familiar to some of you, and it has been a source of consolation over many years.

It comes from Thomas Merton—

My Lord God, I have no idea where I’m going.

I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end, nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I’m following your will does not mean that I’m actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does, in fact, please you. And I hope I will have that desire in all that I’m doing. I hope that I will never do anything [01:40:00] from that desire.

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it, and therefore, I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never, ever leave me to face my perils alone.

And so may each of you know the deep reality of God’s companionship and friendship at this time of your own pilgrimage, [01:41:00] wherever you may be in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen.

Annemarie: Amen. Thank you all. So good to be with you. I’m busy with the assignments. You’ll have them back soon and we wish you a blessed week and we’ll see you next week, Monday. Take care.